Loss of Christa McAuliffe still stings local residents

The space shuttle Challenger explosion is indelibly marked on the consciousness of America.

Dave Choate

The space shuttle Challenger explosion is indelibly marked on the consciousness of America.

The launch was supposed to be a routine mission, but was anything but for New Hampshire residents watching it live. Aboard was Concord High School teacher Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first educator in NASA history to head to space. Wonder turned to horror when a malfunction with one of the shuttle's rocket boosters caused it to explode 73 seconds into its flight, killing the seven crew members on board.

Memories of the tragedy are still sharp 25 years later in New Hampshire, where McAuliffe's legacy has endured in the form of initiatives like the University of New Hampshire's Forest Watch program, started five years after the explosion as a memorial to McAuliffe and a way to teach children in kindergarten through Grade 12 more about their planet. The McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord also honors her legacy.

The memories remain vivid, with many recalling exactly where they were as they watched the explosion.

Longtime state legislator and former City Councilor Laura Pantelakos remembers the day vividly. She was at a personnel hearing for two wrongly accused N.H. Fish and Game officers, she said, sequestered in a hearing room in the basement of the attorney general's office building in Concord.

Pantelakos remembers everyone in the room standing, flabbergasted, as the live television broadcast showed the rocket exploding in a winding plume of smoke. Knowing McAuliffe was aboard brought the incident home for many in the room, she said.

"It just seemed such a terrible tragedy," Pantelakos said. "Anybody that doesn't know where they were (when it happened), they were probably in shock."

Some were students at the time, though not all watched it unfold live. Longtime Portsmouth resident Rebecca Emerson and classmates were engaged in other activities when her shaken teacher returned to class to tell them about the tragedy. Emerson said she "didn't believe him" at first. It was only later, when she got home and watched the news, that she realized the weight of what had happened.

"It was such a big deal, and it was so wonderful and exciting (to have McAuliffe going into space)," Emerson said.

Portsmouth City Councilor Tony Coviello recalls being in fifth grade in Manchester, working on a lesson related to the Challenger, when a vice principal came by and took some of the teachers to a conference room. His teacher returned, crying.

"She told us the Challenger had just exploded," said Coviello, who said many local teachers at the time had a close connection with McAuliffe. "I think I was too young to appreciate the loss of life as much, but it was certainly one of those shocking moments in your life."

For Barbara Massar, the Pro Portsmouth leader who lived in New Jersey at the time, the memories are still enough to inspire emotion. When word of the explosion reached the 500 or so employees of Witco, the company at which she worked, everyone rushed to the cafeteria and the lone television, she said.

"I remember we all just stood there, and here we are all are in a very professional environment, and we're all just standing there crying. I can feel it," she said, then paused. "I can feel it. This whole week or so ... you just get thrown right back there."

Rye Fire Chief William Sullivan recalled when he heard the news. He was fire chief in Bedford, Mass., and remembers one of his firefighters sticking his head in the office and telling him the space shuttle had exploded. He joined firefighters in front of a television and watched the moment playing out over and over again, while media reports tried to piece the tragedy together.

"We all just stood there transfixed for about an hour," Sullivan said, watching the debris drop out of the sky and "wondering if anyone had lived through it."

According to David Pillemer, the Dr. Samuel E. Paul Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of New Hampshire, these are what researchers in the field call flashbulb memories. They're often especially vivid and endure in a way other memories do not, he said.

"The special thing about flashbulb memories is that they're about our own personal circumstances when we learn about a surprising or shocking or emotional event," Pillemer said.

Three primary factors lead to such memories, Pillemer said. They are high emotion created by a catastrophic event such as Sept. 11, 2001, or the assassination of John F. Kennedy; personal importance to the person remembering and the so-called rehearsal of such memories; or talking to others about them and reliving them in the mind.

On some level, Pillemer said, it's the way whole populations of people grieve in the wake of a tragedy. Talking about the Challenger explosion, even 25 years later, helps keep those important events alive in the public consciousness.

"It seems to serve that kind of collective bonding function," he said. "When something negative happens to an entire country, all almost do our collective grieving through those stories."

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